Written by

Barbara Quandt

The launch of the Affordable Care Act hasn't gone well for the Obama administration. The website, Healthcare.gov, which was supposed to be how most Americans entered the new program, exploded on takeoff and remains unworkable.

That's more than an embarrassment for the president. The financial viability of the whole enterprise depends on millions of young and healthy people paying artificially higher premiums in order to subsidize the artificially lower premiums that older, sicker Americans will pay. They're not likely to persist for hours on a website that doesn't work to pay more for ...